StarTalk Radio - #ICYMI - Figure Skating Physics, with Olympic Medalist Sasha Cohen

Episode Date: February 8, 2018

The Winter Olympics are here! Gary O’Reilly and Chuck Nice kick off our series of episodes about Olympic sports with the physics of the most watched event: figure skating. Physicist John Eric Goff is back, along with figure skating analyst Jackie Wong, and Olympic silver medalist Sasha Cohen.Don’t miss an episode of Playing with Science. Subscribe to our channels on:TuneIn: tunein.com/playingwithscienceApple Podcasts: https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/playing-with-science/id1198280360GooglePlay Music: https://play.google.com/music/listen?u=0#/ps/Iimke5bwpoh2nb25swchmw6kzjqSoundCloud: https://soundcloud.com/startalk_playing-with-scienceStitcher: http://www.stitcher.com/podcast/startalk/playing-with-scienceNOTE: StarTalk All-Access subscribers can watch or listen to this entire episode commercial-free here: https://www.startalkradio.net/all-access/figure-skating-physics-with-olympic-medalist-sasha-cohen/Photo Credit: Rich Moffitt (originally posted to Flickr as Opening pose) [CC BY 2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons Subscribe to SiriusXM Podcasts+ on Apple Podcasts to listen to new episodes ad-free and a whole week early.

I'm Gary O'Reilly and I'm Chuck Nice and this is Playing With Science. Today we glide with effortless grace whilst dazzling you with a double or maybe even a triple. We will most certainly Salco and most definitely do it all whilst on the edge. I think it's Salchow, isn't it? No, Salco. Salco? Oh, really? Yep. Oh, okay.

Welcome to the English language. Thank you. Yeah, that ain't English, believe me. And for those of you who don't quite get figure skating as an Olympic sport, get out of here. You know you love it. You watch it all the time. It's got the highest ratings. Gymnastics went on a date with ballet and ended up in the ice rink, here you know you love it you watch it all the time it's got the highest ratings gymnastics went on a date with ballet and ended up in the ice rink and you know you love it make sure we nail this once again we have our good friend professor eric goff who is going

to break down the science and with us throughout the show along with the good professor we have figure skating analyst jackie wong who will no doubt be marking both Chuck and I on our performance. And there is absolutely no hope of either you and I meddling. Oh, that is for sure. And to give us an unrivaled performance POV, we have three-time world championship medalist, former Team USA figure skater, Sasha Cohen. Yeah. That's going to be awesome.

That is going to be incredible. Right. Welcome to The Good Professor. We will have you on board for quite a large part of this show. And in the studio with us, Jackie Wong. Happy to be here. Yeah. The name of your podcast, once again, so as everybody knows, up front, please.

Ice Talk. Ice Talk. Ice Network. Ice Talk. Cool. Yes, it's a little bit similar. It's Ice Talk. Exactly. Very cool.

Very cool. Yes, it's a little bit similar. It's Star Talk meets Ice Talk. Exactly. Very cool. Very cool. And so I would assume that you have a very rabid fan base, because what I know about people who like figure skating is that they are some of the most passionate fans

that you will ever encounter in your life. I mean, it's totally true, but it's also true that Patriots fans are a little bit... If I had to pinpoint the one standout feature of a figure skater, where would you go? Would it be, they've got to be unbelievably graceful, strong, or is there one component, one component for you that screams top class? It's not something that you really see physically, but it's core strength.

Everything is about core strength with figure skating. When you're jumping in the air and you're landing jumps at whatever, eight to ten times your body weight in pressure, you really have to be stable, and you really have to figure out how you don't collapse when you land those jumps. And it's the same thing with the spins.

You can't spin at the rate of revolution that we do without being actually very strong there. Eric, this is perfect timing for you. What sort of forces, male or female figure skater, once they start to perform, what sort of forces are they exposed to in terms of takeoff, spinning, landing, et cetera? Well, they're certainly having to get off the ice with a couple of times their weight if they're going to execute some spins. Keep in mind the great athletes in the NBA who go up and we get dazzled by a 360 spin dunk. These ice skaters are going up spinning two, three, and even four times, and they're landing on a little blade on some slippery ice. They're not

landing on a nice hard court floor. So the athleticism is incredible. And I definitely agree with Jackie. You're talking about a lot of core strength involved in executing these techniques. So I think, Chuck, what we've just learned is under no circumstances from now on do we applaud LeBron James. That's it. LeBron James. Seriously, try that with some skates on, buddy. See what happens.

All right. There you go. We just might applaud. Okay, Jackie. What else? I mean, I look at figure skaters and I say, they must be fearless. I don't want to walk on the ice, right? This is just me, my inner coward has spoken, let alone start to skate, build up speed, and then perform a whole routine of twists, triples, and doubles,

and then even begin to think about landing without falling on my backside. Yeah, fearlessness is certainly a characteristic. I mean, you don't get the kind of downhill skiing kind of fearlessness, right? It's a different kind of exposure to danger that you have with figure skating because you've got sharp things on your feet. You've got a surface that you're landing on that is completely, you know, harsh, right? It's the hardest thing that you can land on in terms of sports, the ice. Right.

And, you know, any kind of slip of an edge or just any kind of accident, you've got problems. With that in mind, two things. One, so in gymnastics, you practice with a harness because when you're flipping, if you miss your flip, you don't want to hit the – and it's a mat that you're falling on, a nice little pad. But they still put a harness on you. I would imagine you can't do that when you are learning these maneuvers in ice skating, or do you? So there are harnesses that you train on, and especially when you are training a new jump, especially when you're going one revolution up, right? Like if you're used to doing double jumps and it's the first time you've ever done a triple jump, you're usually on a harness. And how does that work?

Are you on a trampoline? Are you still on the ice? On the ice. Oh, wow. What happens is there are two types of harnesses that are generally used. One is a harness that is kind of connected to a wire that's like on the ceiling. Like on a track. Yeah, on a track yeah on a track and the coach

will basically be the other side of the lever right or the pulley right you have to have a great relationship

with your coach for that and you're literally in this thing and the idea is that you're not the coach isn't pulling you up

so much as they are spotting you. Spotting you, yeah. So if something goes wrong, the coach kind of keeps you from hitting your head on the ice. Everything is ice-related then. You don't just start to take all of this performance routine, rehearse it in a nice, comfortable environment. nice, comfortable environment. So every time you perform in competition, you have been performing on ice and training on ice all of the time. So it's reinforcing that. Yeah. It's time to you spend on the ice. As Gary said, everything is on the ice. So let's say I just want to know, I want to learn a double toe loop. How much time would I have to

be on the ice? And first, before you answer that, walk us through learn a double toe loop. How much time would I have to be on the ice? And first, before you answer that, walk us through what a double toe loop is. And then how much time would I have to spend on the ice to learn how to do that? So without getting too technical, a double toe loop is a jump where you pick off your free leg. So not your landing leg. So if you rotate counterclockwise, which most skaters do, you land on your right foot. So for those skaters, you pick off of your left toe pick, and you go up in the air, and you spend your time. So the pick is the serrated edge of the back?

That is correct, yeah. Okay, sorry. And when you say pick off, it's when you see them, they're skating backwards, and then you see them pull that leg up, and it looks like they're almost hacking the ice with the front of the skate. Yeah. And that's a pick off? That means pick off. Pick off, pick in.

It depends on who you talk to. Okay, there you go. Yeah, so you take off from hitting the toe pick on the ice and generating that force to go up in the air. And there's certain kinds of other physics of your legs swinging and your body being in the right... We'll get to those, don't worry about that. The good professor is waiting, ready to go on that one. I will not be talking too much about physics.

But then after you pick off that toe pick, you rotate twice around, and then you land on the right foot, your landing foot. Wow. The axis of rotation is head through to... Correct. Yeah. Okay.

That's pretty wild. So how long would it take to... How much time would I spend on the ice to do something like that? It's... In hours. It's very... It's very dependent. would it take to how much time would i spend on the ice to do something like that it's in hours it's very it's very dependent i mean i i would not say i was the most talented figure skater in the world but it took me probably a year of training to get to a double jump oh my god you may have missed your chance oh man and okay. Okay, and now that we're there, how much weight would I have to lose in order to pull this off?

No, I'm joking. Oh, my God, a year. Yeah. That's insane. You have to get all the basics first. You have to figure out how to actually move on the ice. You have to actually figure out how to jump on the ice. And you guys consider that like a basic move, right?

It is. Yeah, that's like a basic move. A year of your life to learn one basic move. They want stuff. Oh, man. I mean, you'll see some of the more talented figure skaters will, you know, they'll be four years old and, you know, within a couple of months they'll get a double jump.

You're crushing him. Absolutely crushing him with the you'll see four-year-olds so let's get to the professor let me just say um i'm hanging up my sequin tights yeah well not just yet more show to go rhinestones well let me pick up a couple points real quick please do please do double toe loop and then swing and pick up from there and wherever you want so you know jack had mentioned that the training methods, um, I've seen some of the British divers, uh, when they train, they can go into a nice padded, uh, gymnastics facility and they actually have a diving board in there and they can practice leaping from the board.

So as long as you're over, uh, you know, liquid water and your main, uh, experience in the Olympics is what you're doing above the water, then you can do that in a nice, warm, cozy facility. But of course, with ice, there is no way to simulate that. You just have to get out on the ice and do your training out there. So as far as taking a year to do the training too, I mean, I think, Gary, you could probably tell Chuck how long it takes to hit a nice 30-yard cross into the box, 30 yards with a nice bend on it with a soccer ball. I mean, those types of things take a long, long time to perfect. It's how much time you have.

I got 10 minutes. Okay. There's got to be an equation, Professor, and I am not the one to push that forward, apart from suggest that there is, the amount of natural ability you have, and we are still talking about figure skating here, plus the amount of time you have, plus the dedication and the amount therein, the coefficient of dedication. Well, I've just invented something. Well done, mate.

I like it. Yes, thank you. And you add all of that together, and then you get an idea of how much time it takes. Because some guys, as you say, this four-year-old who's just absolutely natural, or this other person who gets there because they work their way through it, and they dedicate, and they have this other thing going on. There's a revolution of off-life ice training that has changed quite a bit over the last couple of decades where you see her training the triple axel off ice, and it's literally her on this kind of lazy Susan kind of thing where you get the harness to rotate in such a way

that when she jumps, she's literally just pulling in and doing the rotations. So there are different methods of training now that have made things like all these quads that the guys are doing, the triple axles that the women are starting to attempt more now, that makes those things much more possible. A quad being? Four times around. Four times, yeah.

Whoa. So, okay, Professor, Chuck wants to do a double-toe loop. Okay. Let's go through some of the physics involved in that, and then we'll go for the big stuff. We'll go from double-toe loop to a quad, and then break down the physics and the forces and everything else that takes place within executing that kind of, what do we call it? Routine? Program. Program. Program. Thank you. So Jackie's exactly right about the new training techniques. It's a lot of things you can do off the ice, but of course,

if you're going to train to do the actual jump, you really have to perfect how you get off the ice. And you absolutely want to be able to do it right after you're off the ice so that the core strength, the training on how to pull the arms in, the rotation feel, learning to prevent a little bit of dizziness with focusing on certain points, and all those things can be done off the ice. But unlike a diver, you really have to perfect that launch off the ice. So talk about the actual physics there, Eric. When you talk about launching off the ice, what are the physics involved there? When you talk about pulling your arms in and rotation, why and what are the physics there?

So the rotation part is just a classic angular momentum conservation example. As long as we don't have any torques acting, and you get a little bit of frictional torque from the ice, but you'll notice when a skater goes into the final massive fast spin, what the skater will do is have the arms completely out, perhaps even one leg out, trying to get his or her mass as far from that axis of rotation as possible, and then right whenever the turn is initiated, bringing everything in as tightly as possible

so that the mass is confined to the axis of rotation as close as possible. And that causes the skater to spin even faster. And you can try this at home. If you have a nice swivel chair or if you're at work and maybe your hearts game isn't working on your computer and you need to kill time another way, you got your swivel chair, you get a couple of books in your hand and you hold them outstretched and you get a good spin going on your chair, then pull them in real tight and with your feet off the ground, of course, and you're going to notice you're going to speed up when you pull those arms

in. It's a fantastic feeling if you've never experienced it. If you're over 40, watch out for dizziness. You don't want to fall out of your chair, but it's a fun feeling. Well, thank God I'm a few days from 40. You have just spoken to our inner child. I'm about to do this right now. That's what a scientist is. It's a child asking questions. I'm just, I got the child part down pat. You're the biggest kids in the world. Here we go. Alright, so here we go, man. I'm going to take my arms. I'm going to give

a spin. I'm going to take my arms. I'm going to give a spin. And then we're going to see what happens. Alright, and Jackie, I want you to judge how good this is. Okay, here we go. And... There you sped up. I did. Yeah, I did. It actually works. Let me tell you how you have to jump. Let's do it again. Let's do it. No, I'm joking. No, let's do it during the break. During the break. Sorry, professor. Go ahead.

Let me tell you how you're going to have to jump. So if you're going to get in the air and you're going to do, say, a quad. Now, you know, the men are the ones that can do this first because they've got the stronger legs. So if you're going to do a quad, if you're going to spend four times in the air, you're going to need to jump really high. You're going to need to get three to four feet off the ice, your center mass elevated by that much, which means jumping between 10 and 11 miles an hour off the ice. Wow. You need to be in the air between five, six, then a full second. So your launch speeds here have to be, you know, in that 10 mile an hour range. And to spend four times, you know, you're talking four hertz or four, you know, rotations per second. This is getting, you know, maybe about half the rotation rate of a football that's throwing a nice tight spiral.

So you're going to have to be able to elevate, get a hang time comparable to what an NBA player could do if you're going to execute four of those spins. Wow. See, the thing is, in gymnastics, on the floor routine, the floor itself is sprung. Right. Exactly. I'm no expert, but I'm guessing you can't get a sprung ice. You're not getting any spring off of the ice. So how much more effort, Professor, does it take to push down into the ice to get that up? Or is it all done through the speed of the skater? Well, notice

right before they go into these big spins, they get a little bit of speed going before they execute the spin. And then there's kind of a pound off the ice to really get that impulse off the ice vertically upward. So when they get launched off that ice, you know, at 10 miles an hour, they have to get those rotations in before they come back down. They got to keep their arms in tight. And that's another thing. If they keep their arms in tight, they keep their legs in tight, that's going to enhance their spin rate. If their arms are out too far, they're going to spin slower, as Chuck just showed us in the chair. And, Jackie, do they get judged on that? They get judged on air position.

On air position. If the axis of rotation is completely off, that is something that you may get an execution grade less on. So that's how they judge the elements. Imagine, I'd be thrilled to bits with just one rotation. You've done a quad, but you haven't quite got it in the position that the judges want, and they mark you down? Yeah. That must be really hard work.

Has there ever been a skater who just got poor marks and stood up and go, Really? Let me see you do that! Huh? You're so damn hot with your judging, really? Let me see you do that. Huh? You're so damn hot with your judging. Well, let me see you do it. Hey, the ice is right there, buddy. The ice is right there. John McEnroe.

Could you imagine? The McEnroe of skaters. The McEnroe of skaters. Hot Mike's backstage, right? That's what we need. Sure. Hot Mike's backstage. Yeah, yeah.

All right. All right. With that thought, we're going to take a break. John McEnroe on ice. Yeah, we're going to probably need a lie down to consider that fully. Right. We're going to come back. The good Professor Eric Goff and, of course, Jackie Wong,

the skating expert and analyst, will be with us for our second part. Don't go away. Plenty more to come. Welcome back. I'm Gary O'Reilly. I'm Chuck Nice. And this, of course, is Playing With Science. And today we're unraveling the physics involved in the elegance of figure skating,

which is also known as ballet on ice. And having seen Chuck execute the most immaculate turn, you can see why. Yes, I am a picture of grace and poise. Isn't that just? Yes. And with us in the studio, we have figure skating analyst Jackie Wong, host of the podcast Ice Talk. Yes, Ice Talk.

So remember that one. And via Skype, we have the good professor Eric Goff, the author of Gold Medal Physics. You'll remember it was a stocking stuffer back end of last year. And still is. It still is. And the book for all sports fans who love their science. Yeah.

This is a really fascinating topic because the figure skating is the most watched event of the Winter Olympics. There's nothing that gets higher ratings. So clearly it is extremely popular. What do you think makes for this popularity, Jackie? I think partially it's the dramatics of it all. It's all the kind of histrionics of figure skating, of having music, having programs. And then the fact that when you're a figure skater, you're really expected to be sort of a sign of perfection. So one little slip up and it's like, oh no, you've got something wrong. And you forget how really incredibly difficult this stuff is to do.

And I think the intrigue of it is that you see these skaters doing these, you would think, physically impossible feats, but they do them in such a way that it just seems like they're just skating around casually. How many people like Chuck and I are sitting there thinking, I'm tuned in because I want to see you fall over? And how many people are tuned in because they want to see you execute the most immaculate program? I think it depends on those rabbit fans you were talking about earlier. Yeah. Yeah. I think, you know, it's like NASCAR. There are some people who definitely watch for the crashes. Oh yeah. You know, that's all there is to it. There's gotta be that. I mean, there are YouTube videos online that are all about figure skating falls. So yeah. So speaking of crashes, I saw a video and I'm just want to ask you if it's real. This is an aside, where

there was a ice dancing doubles, and one of them got cut with a skate. Oh, it happens a lot. Oh, really? Yeah, yeah. It's just Blades of Glory. They're just watching you. That's decapitation. That's a different kind of

cutting. No, I mean, figure skating accidents happen all the time, especially when you're an ice dancer in pair skating where the two people are so close to each other. And then the degree of difficulty of the program has to have some sort of dynamic movement. And obviously if you're going upside down, that means the skates are coming closer to your face. Yeah, totally.

And you even see that in practice because there are, you know, when you're actually training, you're training with five to 10 to 15 skaters and you know, one little slip up and you crash into somebody else and you're done. Now we're on the subject of the skates themselves please please explain and then we'll get the professor to break down the physics behind the skate itself because it's not a single blade is it? It's a it's it's two edges on a blade so if you if you turn the blade upside down, you literally see two kind of knives, and then there's this kind of U-shaped.

So it's two, like, razors with a trough in the middle. Exactly, yeah. And that's called the rocker. That's called the rocker, that little trough in the middle? Exactly. Okay. And is that so that you can turn either left or right and get a blade on the ice either way, or does that speed you up? What's the purpose of that?

Well, it's to allow you to have an inside edge and an outside edge without it literally just being one blade that goes on the ice. And it's about 3 16ths of an inch thick. So it's pretty hefty, but it's not that hefty. Yeah. Professor, with the double-edged blade, what are we working with in terms of the physics, whether it's an inside and an outside edge? And can I shave with it? Yes. You probably could.

Well, I don't know about shaving, but you certainly get a little bit of enhanced stability when you have two options instead of one for your blade placement. So as Jackie was saying, you have, you know, certain moves are going to require an inside edge. Certain moves are going to require an outside edge. So you have a little wider flexibility than you would with a single blade. So the pressure melting was a popular theory for how you might actually get the ice to be slippery, but that's been somewhat debunked. So you could actually get those thin blades to start slightly warm the ice and reduce the friction coefficient and actually help you go a little bit faster. I think the ideal ice temperature is around minus five and a half or so degrees Celsius, which is what, 22 or so degrees Fahrenheit.

And so you're not going to be able to warm it quite up to pure melting, although the surface is a little different from the bulk. So you can get a little bit of melting right at the very, very surface layer. And that thin blade, whenever you're on just one or the other, can actually enhance that melting process. So you could actually get a little bit more lubrication and a little bit more speed. So, Jackie, wait, speak to that for one second. From a skater standpoint, is it better to have, what's better? Like softer ice, harder ice? What's faster?

Do you want faster ice? What's the perfect ice conditions? You don't have a soft landing, are you? I would like, yeah. You get rubber ice so that when you fall. Come on, please. For a lot of figure skaters, they love the softer ice because the softer ice allows your edge to really carve into the ice. So the harder the ice there is, the harder your edge, it is going to be for your edge to actually make the curves that you want to make.

And so harder ice actually gets to be a bit more slippery. So the softer ice allows more control. Yeah, it's a little bit more control, yeah. Professor, is there a sweet spot? Because we always find that in sports, there's this inextricable part of being a sweet spot on the blade. And if there is, whereabouts is it and how does a performer get to utilize it so i mean just to pick up quickly on jackie's point the the added

slipperiness is going to come when you're trying to push outward like when you're trying to make a turn so when the ice is harder and you don't quite get that melted layer that you want right next to the blade, you can't actually, you know, it can enhance a fall. You're not going to grip it as he was saying. If you're going straight on the ice and you're looking to have a slight reduction in the coefficient of friction associated with the blade and the ice, if you get a little bit of warming and you kind of soften that ice slightly, you can actually lower that coefficient a little bit and help you go faster in a straight line. But definitely when you're trying to head out on a turn and you're trying to get that nice centripetal force inward to help you keep moving in a circular path, you definitely like that softer ice to be able to kind of cut into it and kind of hold you there a little bit better than you would if the ice was a lot harder and you don't have that give in it. Where is the sweet spot on that blade and what does it do?

I mean, either one of you can answer that. Jackie, you skate. So what's the sweet spot about and why would you even want it or need it? So the sweet spot, kind of like in a lot of other sports, it's the ball of your foot. And that's what I was talking about earlier, the rocker, right? The rocker it's the ball of your foot. And that's, there's, what I was talking about earlier, the rocker, right? The rocker is basically this curve of your blade. And there is this part in the blade where literally,

if you stand on it the right way, your toe pick, which is in the front, is elevated. The back, which is the heel, is also elevated. So you're not,, the blade is not flat to the ice. The blade has a curvature to it. And so that's where the rocker is, where you want to be when you're spinning, because that, that keeps you in contact with the ice. Exactly. And, and the thing about spinning is, um, what you don't see is it's literally just circles that you're making around the eyes.

It's not that you're like rotating on one point. You're rotating in very, very small circles. Wait, now speak to that because I watched this, I don't know when it was, maybe it was the last Olympics or it might've been world championships that were on NBC. Okay. So the young lady was doing the super fast spin at the end, but the announcer, I remember distinctly saying, uh-oh, uh-oh. Traveling. She did a little traveling there, as you can see. She talked about the circles moving across, and it moved like, I don't know, an inch and a half, two inches. I'm like, really, lady?

Are the judges that brutal? I'm like, is that a big, right? Really, that's a big problem. But anyway, what is that? Is that you have to be in one, you've got to stay in that place? If you want to get the best marks on an element, yes. It's about speed. It's about positioning. It's about centering, which is what.

Centering. It's not about the Russian judge. That's not the way it used to be. Oh, you watched figure skating because you wanted to see how low your mark was with the Russian judge. And the Russian judge gives her, oh, a minus six. See, all of this has changed, hasn't it? There is now a different system of marking and judging. And it seems an awfully complex procedure

because I just thought I can cope with six or less. With my math, I'm good with that. Now you can get marks up to over 130 and wherever. Yeah, and that has a lot to do with figure skating trying to make itself more objective. And so half of the mark now is much more along the lines of like, here are the elements that were done. Here are the base values of the elements that were done.

This is how well it was done. That's how you get to a number. Because when you go back to the 90s and before, and you had the 6.0 system, you literally had, you know, the Russian judge giving 5.5. Everybody knows the Russian judge. And the Russian judge gives, oh, what is that on the card? Capitalist pig.

I didn't even know that was a score. Anyway. And you wonder what those marks mean. And now at least there is some sort of accountability. Quantified them. There's a, but speaking back to the traveling, very quickly, Eric, does that come from leaning one way or the other? Or what creates that little bit of traveling when you're in the process of that spin from a physics standpoint?

So when you enter the spin, you're obviously coming at it from a certain direction. And whenever you enter that spin, you are going to have a slight drift unless you can arrest it somehow right on that first turn. It's very difficult to maintain an exact spot on the ice whenever you're doing that spin because you have to enter the spin with some kind of velocity in some direction. So when you start the spin, you may have a very slight drift involved unless you can do a lean or some type of a little cut on that first part of it just to hold yourself steady at the beginning. But you got to have a little bit of a circle down there to help give you that inward push. But once you get started on that spin, you can make that circle pretty small. That comes back to your core strength.

Yeah. Absolutely. So classic example, yes, core strength. Yeah. Yeah, it does. Absolutely. So, classic example, yes, core strength. Anybody breathe in. Hold my breath for the rest of the show now. Core strength. Before we get to a break, Jackie,

how much more can we see from the performers in terms of, so we've got to a quad now, which was, I don't know, 20, 30 years unthinkable.

Can we go further? I think so. I think so. I don't know when that's going to be. You know, 20, 30 years unthinkable. Can we go further? I think so. I think so. I don't know when that's going to be. You've got coaches thinking that right now the quad lutz is the hardest jump. All right. And there's one other quad, which is the quad axle, which adds a half rotation. So it's four and a half rotations.

That's why the axle is more difficult than the rest of it, because it's an extra half rotation, because you're taking off forwards and landing backwards. So, um, there are coaches out there who think that a quad axle will be landed sometime in the next couple of years or so there, you know, there are, uh, there are skaters who are actually play trying them, you know, they're not, they're not actually training them seriously, but that's possible. Whether or not a quintuple jump is going to be around in the next 10 years, we'll see.

Really, a lot of it depends on how much people are willing to push themselves, how training methods change. All right, Professor. How long, how much airtime, hang time, call it what you may, will a quintuplet? A quintuple. Quintuple take? I mean, it's probably going to take longer than it takes me to say it or not. I don't know. So remember, if you could jump in the air and stay

in the air for one second, you're going to have to elevate your center mass about four feet. for one second, you're going to have to elevate your center mass about four feet. Now that is better than even some NBA players can do. You have to jump 11 miles an hour off the ice, and you need to stay in the air for a full second. And you're really, the laws of physics are constraining what can happen here. So you have to get four feet in the air and you're looking at, you know, five rotations during that second. That is just about the limit of what a human can do right now. Can we up the speed? And would that have any benefit or just that's me in the front row of the audience? What do you mean up the speed? On the ice. In other words, if you go faster and get into the jump and the

rotation faster, will that allow you to get to the fifth rotation? Well, it's kind of like this trade-off you have when you do a long jump. I mean, you want to get a lot of speed whenever you're taking off for the jump, but you also need a good bounce in the air to go high because you need to stay in the air a long time. It's the same thing with the skate. You can go fast into the turn, into the spin, but you're going to sacrifice a little bit if you're going too fast because you have to have that hard jump off the ice that gives you that vertical force upward so that you going to be four feet jumping into the air i mean this is going to take incredible athleticism core strength you know you know just as strong as you could make it and uh you're going to have for five rotations i think we're a way off for that one okay okay i'll show you doc i'll show you yeah so right well you'll all see you but you

got to get out of the chair, Chuck. You can't stay in the chair. We are going to take a break, and when we come back, Chuck will have had six rotations. That is guaranteed. Right. Staying with us, the good professor and, of course, Jackie Wong. But to join us will be former U.S. champion and Olympic medalist

Sasha Cohen. Absolutely. Playing with Science is still here and we're back with those wonderful people after this break. Welcome back. I'm Gary O'Reilly. And I'm still Chuck Nice. And this is Still Playing with Science.

We're here in the studio with figure skating analyst Jackie Wong, who has been fabulous with us and his host of podcast called Ice Talk. Please go and check that out. And joining us via Skype. We are thrilled. We are thrilled, aren't we? Absolutely.

Absolutely thrilled to have Sasha Cohen, 2006 Silver Olympic medalist, three-time World Championship medalist. The list goes on and on and on. And Chuck. Yeah. I do believe this lady was involved in the Blades of Glory movie. Oh. To make you even more jealous

Yes, exactly Because you know, that would have been my dream To be in Blades of Glory Anything where I can wear tights and skates So welcome to the show You may want to leave now Thank you, it's a pleasure to be on It's a pleasure for us to have you here

So, okay You started off as a gymnast in an early age and then graduated into figure skating. The gymnastics background, that must have been such a help for you. It was. I actually was a bit of a terror. I destroyed the house. So my parents were trying to figure out a way to use up my boundless energy. And that took the form in three hours of gymnastics a day, which ended up giving me a chance to develop my coordination and strength. And then by the time I started skating, I kind of already had some natural athletic ability.

But ice is still slippery. It's a different. It certainly is. Yeah. Hey, you know, I think, Eric, you have a question for Sasha. Isn't that right? Yeah, I've actually got a couple, but let me start with this one. So when we do a little karate or martial arts, we're taught when we're doing spins to try to have a focal point.

And I'm just wondering, when you're spinning on the ice so much, do you do any kind of training to get you to the point where you can spin like that in an effective way without getting dizzy? Or do you have a focal point that you're checking out when you're in a spin? Or is there a certain technique to help you with that? So the secret is, which is very different than dance, which you spot your head with every turn in order to not get dizzy. With figure skating, you have to stay centered. If you stay within one foot, your pattern's tracing over and over, you will miraculously be able to come out and not be dizzy.

But if you start traveling, which is, you know, points off and not the ideal way to go in a competitive figure skating spin, you'll get very dizzy. And I think it's something to do with the inner ear and losing your vertical alignment within space. And that's when you completely lose it and would come out and see stars and be very dizzy. But if you stay in one spot, you can come out and be fine as if nothing ever happened. Wow. So you really need to keep the vertical drift to a minimum whenever you're

doing that, I guess. Within inches. As soon as you start to travel two feet or three feet, you come out of it and you're very disoriented. Yeah. So the horizontal drift is minimized, your vertical drift is minimized. So your head's pretty much staying in the same spot. It's just spinning, I guess. Well, let me ask you this question about stretching because you're famous for, you know, doing these splits on the ice, these vertical splits where, you know, one leg's way up in the air and you can do spins and like that. Do skaters engage in any kind of sophisticated stretching routines whenever they're training? I mean, do you use equipment for this or is it just kind of a standard get on the mat and make sure you can do a split? So I was fortunate to start with a core of gymnastics, but then it's, it's a day stretching is a daily habit. It's, um, it's a commitment and

it's a discipline. So at night I would take a bath and then if I wanted to watch TV, I would be sitting in the splits. And the discipline of stretching, of repeating daily is how you cultivate that kind of flexibility. And then you work on the strength component to be able to hold those kind of flexible positions in a spire when you're out on the ice and don't have the floor to support you. So I would say I would maybe sometimes use a TheraBand to stretch out my hamstrings or IT band. But generally, I think I'm flexible enough that I can kind of just grab onto my calf and pull it close to my face if I'm on my back. But I think if you're a beginner You are such a show off, Sasha. No, I've just been way too long stretching.

I mean, imagine everything else I could have done with my life if I wasn't sitting in the splits for half of it. I'd be waiting to touch my toes if I'd bend my knees. Well, this is where you are now. Hey, listen. We've got to say goodbye to the good professor because he is a man in demand. He has a lecture to attend and there are eager students awaiting him. So, Professor, thank you so much for your time. And we look forward to your company soon.

Pleasure is ours, as always. We'll see you soon, Eric. Take care. Thank you. So, we have Sasha here, Jackie. What was her trademark? What was her unique point in her performance that everyone just went oh wow all people would cram through the doors to see every time she performed well it was a good segue because her trademark really was her flexibility and probably still is her flexibility when she's

on the ice um and and so much of sasha cohen's uh appeal appeal was the way that she presented herself in, you know, in the music, in the choreography. And then the jumps really were in a lot of ways secondary for her performances. Like they were they were just seamlessly kind of integrated within her program. And that's that's why people loved her so much. And Sasha, we're not talking about you like you're not here. That's why people loved her so much. And Sasha, we're not talking about you like you're not here. It's just that we don't want you to have to toot your own horn.

But, you know, you are a fan favorite. It seems as though you're known and people love your performances, your routines, your programs. performances, your routines, your programs. Does that give you a bit of an advantage during a competition, knowing that you're so beloved by the audiences that are watching? I think that's very personal for every athlete. I think ultimately on a personal level of approval and connection to an audience, it's a wonderful feeling to have, to have cultivated a relationship with the audience over your decade competing in the sport. And, you know, some people thrive in that position. Some people thrive as the underdog and when no one knows them. But I know that, you know, when I came back in 2010 for the national championships, just You know, when I came back in 2010 for the national championships, just knowing that I had been here and been competing at this event for probably the last 15 years, it becomes home to you. And the people have seen you grow up and seen you skate since you were 12 years old.

And that's a wonderful connection to have when you've grown up with your audience. So it's something that I very much cherished. when you've grown up with your audience. So it's something that I very much cherished. Just to endorse what Chuck was saying, you have been inducted into the Hall of Fame, which was 2016, I believe. So congratulations to that.

A lot of people would look at your performances and say they were effortless. How did you and how much effort did you put in to achieving effortless on the ice? And does that ever hurt you? Because when you make something look super easy, when you make it look like you're not put like you're, it's a day in a walk in the park, couldn't that kind of, I don't know, change the psychology of the way the judges are looking at you kind of like, uh, you know, uh, like, uh, yeah, she's not really, you know, she's not really putting that much into it because honestly, that's how easy you make it look. Well, I appreciate that, but I think this

is something that applies to the whole sport of figure skating. It's our job to make it look easy. We're not supposed to be breathing heavy and struggling and grimacing. Like this isn't football. Um, and so we have to make it look easy and when I go back and watch videos I'm like oh wow like it just seems so effortless and now when I go back and I you know try to skate for a few minutes I'm bent over doubled over and like barely breathing everything is sore my calves are cramping up and but I think skating is like an art as well as a sport like ballet and so the beauty is um kind of this exterior shell for for the deep athleticism that we cultivate underneath that and it's it's part of the figure skater's job to make it look easy you know I think there's not many

people that get to a really high level that that you think, wow, they're really struggling. If you can, at the height of your performances, what kind of routine, daily routine, would you go through? From start of your day, getting out of bed to going back to bed, what would your day encompass to make you a top elite athlete? My day would start you know I get up around 6 30 I would make some coffee and then tea and then I'd get right on a pilates mat I had a pilates mat in my kitchen and I'd spend about 30 minutes on a foam roller stretching doing uh 10 minutes of core work and and ab work and some stretching just to kind of get the body warm. Because when you wake up in the morning, everything is incredibly painful and stiff, you know, from five hours of training the day before and the day before and the last 15 years.

And that really, that builds up. And then I would go to the rink and then I would warm up again with a 20-minute run. And you just really want to be so supple, so warm. You're running, you're sweating. And then you start to cultivate coordination and quickness and that quick twitch muscle fiber with doing jumps off the ice and really quick drills. See how fast you can move your feet. would be the start of the skating day, which would, again, start with 30 minutes of edge work and really feeling your feet and your blade, like exactly where it was on the ice and your shoulders and hips over your feet. And then maybe an hour later, you would start jumping and spinning

and working on the choreography because the body is really a finely tuned machine and it doesn't just turn on. It takes it takes, you know, it takes a couple hours to really kind of cultivate to where you're able to do, um, a peak performance. And I think that's part of the reason why we've kind of trained ourselves to compete at night, which is, you know, for viewership, when all the events are your body's most awake, um, you've kind of worked through all the morning stiffness. Uh,

and that's when you're kind of in peak capacity. That's funny. How did you get on that? That's like singers. Singers sing at night because, you know, you need the day to warm your voice up in your vocal cords. To that point, that's really wild. Yeah, that's what your voice sounds like in the morning.

I have half a voice in the morning. It takes some time. That's right. The body is the same. The body is completely the same. I have a love song I'd like to sing. Yeah, okay. Oh dear. No more Barry White, please. You're barred from Barry White. Wait a minute. In the big competitions, just before we get to Jackie, in the big competitions,

were they always at night or did you find yourself having to perform your programs during the afternoon and therefore you're out of sync with the whole buildup that you've had well there's certainly um an element of being out of sync just from jet lag and time zone difference um so you try to get there in advance and then switch as fast as you can um but usually always the final rounds will always be at night um what can really mess you up though is the qualifying rounds i I get a world championship. Um, and you might have to do your full long program at eight in the morning and that's very difficult for the body. So you would get yourself up at 4am and really try to work into it, warm everything up, go

to your practice. Um, because the body, again, just takes so much time to get amped and ready to peak. Wow. Wow. So so jack you had a question i did well first of all the well the thing about the olympics this year is actually that the skaters are going to be mostly competing in the morning so that that's going to be an interesting one um and it's a lot based on the fact that uh you know nbc wants primetime coverage, and that's the agreement. So we'll see how that affects the skaters. But Sasha, I wanted to go back to something we talked about here

on the air earlier in the show, which was quads. And we talk about the men doing a lot of quads. You, I think there's a certain amount of athleticism that we don't credit you with, but at one point in your career, you were training quads, and there's a very skating-famous video of you at Skate America 2002, I think, 2003, 2001, one of those, doing and landing a quadruple sow cow. And I wanted to ask you, as a skater who has done quads and trained quads, what that process was like, because I certainly can't att who has done quads and trained quads what that process was like because

I certainly can't attest to training quads. It's a different paradigm and I think especially for a woman you know our body does not rotate as fast as the men do and and it was such a different paradigm from a triple to a quad and for me you know it was really only a possibility with my sow cow because on the takeoff I I had an edge that I could just really whip and and as I was going up into the air I could start to get incredible uh torque in order to be able to complete four rotations um but what's scary about you know a quad is you have to go in with more speed. It's like a bow that you're pulling back. You have to pull a little further to get up higher and higher.

Everything is not set completely straight and right. You launch with that much torque and velocity and it's wrong. When you fall, when you go it can it can end really badly um and that's something that you know is mitigated to a certain extent in a triple and even more so in a double you've got time to correct when you're rotating um more slowly and so with a quad it just you know i trained with a harness um to kind of get comfortable launching my full athletic torque behind it because there's like there's a safety element again we we take off that i took off backwards um from my inside edge of my left foot and if i was my shoulders were dropped like two

millimeters to the right i could end up putting a lot of torque into it and kind of getting pretty crooked in the air and then i would go down and just kind of ruin my hip um so so there's there's that balance that you have to take in account um everything has to be that much more precise when you're putting another layer of torque into it I was going to ask science yes I was about to ask you do you are you cognizant of the physics while you are training and performing? And the answer clearly is yes. Yeah, I mean, I think at a kinesthetic level, you feel it. You're so in tune with your body as an athlete. It is your medium.

It is something that you develop for 20 years in different capacities. So you're just very aware. And then, you know, there's a level of awareness you develop when you're learning a quad and how different it takes a very different level of awareness of your body and messaging to your specific your arms, your legs, what needs to be done in order to get up, to get around four times

and to land and so I think yes, from that level, from a kinesthetic level, I'm aware of the physics, but from the angles, the torque, the scientific laws, you know, you might have to fill in, you know, do the backfill from there. Get the professor on it. Exactly. Sasha, thank you. Wow, nice. So great to talk to you.

To talk to you and for you to share your time with us. I'm sure our listeners are thrilled, just as Chuck and I are. So thank you very much for being one of our guests. Likewise. It was a pleasure. Thank you again. Thank you. And thank you to Jackie.

Yeah. Yeah, very cool, man. Thank you. When you're off to South Korea, you will be at the Winter Olympics. I sure will. And you'll be tweeting like a man in a frenzy. Tweeting, typing, all kinds of things yes well safe travels and have a great trip thanks for having me you're welcome uh well that's our

show that is figure skating if you weren't really into figure skating before hopefully now what we've done is roll back the curtain to allow you to good look at what's going on that's right interest is peaked because chuck and i although we don't look great in Leica or Sequins, we may just take to the ice and skate. What do you think? Yeah, we're off right now to go practice our doubles program. Yeah. Yeah.

We will do that. LML ice dancing. It's a thing. Isn't it? I just made it that. Okay. I'm a bit scarred now. Right. That's it from us. Blades of glory, not blades of glory. Isn't it i just made it that okay uh i'm a bit scarred now right that's it from us blades of glory not blades of glory isn't it just right so that's it from

planning science hope you've enjoyed it we will be back with a new episode very very soon